Rational Accommodations to Safeguard the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - Essay Example

? Question The Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 (ADA) is a law that was endorsed in 1990 by the U.S. Congress. It was also modified with a few changes effective January 1, 2009. The ADA is a far-reaching civil rights law that forbids, under specific circumstances, discrimination that is based on disability. It provides equal fortification against discrimination to Americans who have disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which deals with judgement built around race, sex, religion and origin. Disability can be defined as impairment, physical or mental in nature that will significantly hinder a chief life activity. The decision of whether any specific condition is considered a disability is actually made case by case. Certain definite conditions are omitted as disabilities, such as visual impairment which can be corrected as well as substance abuse. ADA 1990 can be divided into five main titles: 1. Employment: Corporations must offer rational accommodations to safeguard the rights of persons with disabilities in all facets of employment. Likely changes may include rearrangement of jobs, altering the design of workstations, or adjusting equipment. Employment features may comprise of the application procedure, appointment, earnings, assistances, and all other aspects of occupation. 2. Public Services: Public services, which comprise national and resident government instrumentalities, cannot deny facilities to people with incapacities participation in programs or activities which are used by people without disabilities. In accumulation to that, public transportation systems must be completely available to persons with disabilities. 3. Public Accommodations: Original building and modifications must be available as well as reachable to persons with incapacities. For prevailing services, hurdles to services must be abolished if voluntarily attainable. Public accommodations may comprise of services such as restaurants, retail stores as well as grocery stores. 4. Telecommunications: Telecommunications corporations offering telephone service to the general public must have telephone transmit service to persons who use telecommunication plans for the deafened or comparable devices. 5. Miscellaneous: This comprises a provision elimination (1) forcing or intimidating or (2) reacting against the incapacitated or those trying to help people with disabilities in declaring their rights under the decree of ADA. (Lawton, 1990) The ADA Standards for accessible design relating to businesses apply to all profit-making conveniences. This actually means that buildings as well as facilities must follow the plans regardless of whether they are kept by government organizations or private industries. Some examples of government activities that must stand by these values include governments, transportation establishments, and many other agencies that are functional in a building or facility. Private productions that are essential to follow the ethics would include hotels, retailers as well as fast-food chains. The ADA Standards for accessible design have implications for all business organizations. However, the time of life and worth of a facility may define which standards relate. All new constructions must follow to the whole set of values. In addition to that, variations or add-ons to present buildings must also fulfil the lowest standards. However, if a business that has been selected operates in a facility deemed as "historic" by the Federal, State, a varied type of the criterions may apply to guarantee that the historic nature of the construction is not damaged due to ADA design changes. The ADA also specifies very precise principles for building construction. It outlines certain "available routes" that can be defined as tracks through which disabled people with or without wheelchairs can travel without meeting any blockades - and sets rules for their erection. Procedures for the creation of certain function-specific rooms like lavatories as well as dressing rooms are delivered. Stairs as well as elevators are also shielded and covered by the ADA standards, which comprises particulars as precise as statures, railings, and detectable planes. As far as location is concerned, ADA standards require the small businesses to be located where the impaired can easily reach them without substantial hindrances. Moreover, sign boards are to be located at various prominent spots as to help the visually impaired to detect the exact location of the business. Question 2 Business strategy incorporates giving leverage to the core capabilities of the organization in order to reach the desired objective or goal. It also involves the critical and decision-making process adjoining what to offer in terms of products as well as services, when to offer it in terms of timing and business cycle etc. and where to offer it in terms of markets and business cycles etc. It also caters to where to offer it in terms of markets and segments as a share of the competitive plan. While the business strategy is made up of the overall course of action that an organization wishes to follow, the supply chain strategy will be made up of the actual operations of the organization as well as an extended supply chain in order to meet a specific objective. There are five supply chain strategies that include: 1. Implement demand-driven scheduling that is based on real-time demand understandings and demand modeling: The right forecast and eventuality planning tools will guarantee a complete view and an operative response to hazards such as the suppliers switching business, political unrest as well as natural disasters that affect the manufacturing process. The companies then can go about adjusting the variables. The fundamental idea is to have the prudence to influence opportunities and alleviate stimulating events so that the organization not only endures, but flourishes. This type of demand driven strategies is seen to have been employed by many organizations particularly in the manufacturing sector to keep pace with the dynamic market structures. Examples of such companies include fertilizer and food manufacturing companies. 2. Form an adaptive supply chain with quick planning and cohesive accomplishment: Once the upper level is able to predict demand and risk in a better way, there is a need to adjust their supply chains to the ever-changing market prospects and processes. Companies must put in place energetic forecasting and recurrently fine-tune operations. Companies like Walmart and Starbucks are excellent examples of companies utilizing their supply chain to the fullest in terms of capitalizing on its adaptability and flexibility factors. 3. Enhance product plans for sustainability, manufacturing, and supply to strengthen as well as fast-track lucrative invention: Innovation is very important for being one step ahead in the competitive arena. But origination doesn't exist in separation from the other variables. In order to be efficacious, products must be produced at the appropriate cost. Moreover, decisions made during the early stages of the product development lifecycle can have a major impact in making or breaking the product. Designs must be enhanced for supply and production and the cost must be rightly predicted. IT related companies highly rely on this aspect of supply chain management such as Microsoft and Apple as they have to produce innovative products that are also compatible to the price range of the target markets. 4. Bring into line your supply chain with business aims by linking sales and operations planning with business forecasting: Although S&OP (sales and operation planning) procedures provide synchronization among sales, manufacturing, as well as distribution; there still exist gaps and disconnects among the cohesion between finance, strategy as well as operations in many organizations. In order to bridge these gaps it is important to integrate it with business development. The most appropriate example of synchronizing the sales and operations side of product development can be the clothing store company of Zara that does exceptionally well based on the coherence of all its operational as well as sales functions. 5. Implant sustainability into supply chain processes: The three-tiered bottom line of people, profit as well as the planet holds crucial importance in today’s world. Some of the researches and studies point out that organizations struggling for social and ecological sustainability almost always accomplish major competitive advantages in the market place especially related to production efficacy, supplier management services, and appeal to employees (Muzumdar, 2010). Example of such organizations includes IBM that boasts itself as having employed supplier relationships that address the corporate and environmental responsibilities. Question 3 Career Management is the mixture of structured scheduling and the active administration of selection of one's own profession. The consequence of effective career management should include personal accomplishment, balance between work and life as well as goal attainment and assured finances. There are a number of questions that every fresh graduate has to answer. Not only it is difficult to take the first step it is even harder to achieve the goal. Huge amount of planning is required to achieve a goal; therefore career planning workshops are available for people who are facing difficulty in making such choices. It’s very rare that these people take time off and think about their future, career planning workshop will help such people to decide about their future career. Globalization has increased the competition. The world is much more competitive and fast track with innovations and technology changing drastically. With such changes evolving, it is very necessary that a proper guidance is given to people who are entering the industry. Achieving a degree is one thing but being aware of what the industry is demanding is another. The career planning workshops hope to achieve this goal by creating awareness and generally helping the graduates pursuing the career that goes along with their personality. For this, the career planning workshops first analyse the personality traits of the person and later try to match them with the industry requirements. Summarizing what career planning workshop intends to do is that it wants to bridge the gap between the employee requirements and the employees. The career planning workshop can be divided into three sections. 1. Assessment: Career planning workshops tend to assess your personality traits, interests and values by tests. This operation of career planning workshops identify an individual’s interest in occupational areas, leisure activities, work, subjects studied, types of people that the individual is comfortable working with and various learning and work environments desired by the individual. This phase helps in the identification of personality preferences in terms of defining an individual’s unique strengths and skills. 2. Exploration: Having identified the personality characteristics, abilities, values, skills and strengths of the individual, the next step is to choose the appropriate career path for him/her. In the exploration phase the counselor bridges the gap. Using the assessment he can easily judge the person and match it with the career he should pursue. Job requirements salary and future scope of the job is discussed as well by the counselor. Future prospects are checked. The goal is to find the perfect career that totally fits your interest traits and values. This function assists in defining a professional goal for the individual. It narrows the probable career paths down to a few most appropriate. It makes sure that the chosen options present are best suited to the education and experience of the individual. 3. Planning: In a planning phase, a proper plan is laid on how to achieve the career that totally fits you including all the educational steps that the person should take. It defines a road map for the attainment of the desired career goals right from developing the skills and background required, to the developmental process for flourishing in that field. As this is the final stage, so by this phase the career options actually boil down to a select few that are then prioritized in terms of the individual’s preferences and pursued accordingly. The career planning workshops provides exposure to people which can help them choose the best career. Apart from that, they provide the people with insights of the careers which will prove beneficial to the attendees (Ibarra, 2003). Question 4 When we talk about Human Resource Management, there are a couple of terms we need to familiarize with; Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact. These terms talk about the rights of the employees in a certain organization, and are guides to prevent employee dissatisfaction. Both of these terms talk about the unfair practices being performed on the workforce. Disparate treatment forbids employers from treating candidates or workers in a different way because of their association in a confined class. Disparate treatment refers to when an employer deliberately discriminates against people on the basis of certain characteristics such as race or sex. A disparate treatment violation is made out when a person of a confined group is shown to have been singled out and treated less constructively than others. The matter is whether the employer's actions were aggravated by discriminatory intent. Discriminatory intent can either be shown by direct proof, or through indirect or incidental evidence. Disparate impact says that employment activities can be considered unfair and illegitimate if they have an unbalanced "adverse impact" on members of a minority group. This can happen when an employment activity or policy has an unreasonably bad effect on members of the confined class as compared with non-members of the confined class. Disparate impact, also known as adverse impact, refers to situations where an apparent neutral employment policy or practice adversely affects a confined class of employees. The most common example of disparate impact is when an employer uses selection criteria that, deliberate or not, filters out an unbalanced number of women and/or minorities. Some otherwise very well-informed and tidy HR folks, and possibly even lawyers, may have difficulty understanding the difference between disparate treatment and disparate impact. Disparate impact is the effect of a work situation or policy that was not essentially intended to show favouritism. It operates quite differently to disparate treatment if one is to verify that favouritism has or has not occurred. It occurs if: “as matter of statistics, [employment practices] have a greater impact on one group than on another. Disparate treatment is open favouritism against someone because of their confined class. The basic concept of disparate treatment can be defined as “the employee is claiming that the employer treated her differently than other employees who were in a similar situation.” So, it’s quite apparent that the understanding of both the terms is vital for the organization as it helps a great deal in the human recourse management. Violation of disparate treatment and disparate impact can lead to legal action taken against the perpetrator (Armstrong, 2006). Works Cited ADA. Homepage. Web. 11th April 2011 from http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Discrimination/Disabilities-ADA/President-Bush-Signs-ADA-Changes-into-Law/ Lawton, K.A. Christianity Today, 10/8/90, Vol. 34 Issue 14, p71 Armstrong, Michael (2006). A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (10th ed.). London: Kogan Page. ISBN 0-7494-4631-5 OCLC 62282248 Ibarra, Herminia (2003). Working identity: unconventional strategies for reinventing your career 2003 web, Harvard Business Press ISBN 9781578517787 11th April 2011 from http://books.google.com/?id=m4bzwnBdktoC Muzumdar, M. “Strategies for better supply chain management” July 2010: web. 11th April 2011 from http://blogs.oracle.com/scm/2010/07/5_strategies_for_better_supply_chain_management_in_the_current_economy.html Read More